Diagnosis

How do I know if I have got HPV?

A sexual health check at the doctors/clinic (routine check up) is not able to detect skin viruses, HPV or HSV (genital herpes).

HPV can be diagnosed only if a person has visible warts on genital skin or if they have an abnormal cervical smear result.

If a person has no symptoms, there is no test to determine if HPV is present or has 'gone'.

Cervical screening is not a test for HPV. HPV DNA tests are used as part of cervical screening and cannot be used to answer the questions "Have I got HPV?" and "Has the HPV gone?".

As most HPV infections clear spontaneously, it is impossible to know whether in some cases the immune system has completely cleared the HPV virus from the body, or whether the virus remains at undetectable levels, capable of re-emerging if the immune system weakens. New tests may in the future be able to clarify this.